David Springate, PhD, is the founder of the Executive MBA program. For more than 20 years, he has served the program and is currently the Academic Director. Dr. Springate is also the co-founder and Director of the Center for Finance Strategy Innovation and the former Associate Dean for Executive Education Programs. Springate is a tenured professor of finance in the Jindal School of Management.
His teaching interests focus on private equity, corporate renewal, international finance and innovation in all areas of finance. The University's graduate management courses in these areas were all initiated by Dr. Springate over the past twelve years. As part of these initiatives, opportunities for innovative applied finance projects using graduate student and faculty teams have been structured and successfully concluded. He has been selected as the Outstanding Graduate Teacher in the School of Management and as Outstanding Professor in the Executive MBA program. Earlier faculty appointments include the International Management Development Institute in Switzerland, the University of Tennessee, and Southern Methodist University. He has delivered approximately 160 short seminars and custom programs for executive groups and corporations and is on the faculty of the University's System Engineering and Management program.
Dr. Springate served as chief executive of the investment subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar financial institution, as a manager for a listed Swiss investment company, as the Chairman of a luxury automobile dealership and as an Air Force electronics systems project officer. He has also acted in a direct consulting capacity to many corporations including 3M Corporation, Ford, Goodyear, Prentice Hall and others. He served on the program committee of the Metroplex Technology Speaker Series for the Management of High Technology, as a director and Vice Chairman of the CFO Roundtable program and is currently a board member of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance. He is also the past president of the Dallas Chapter of Financial Executives International and is now an Area Director of FEI.
Dr. Springate has a Ph.D. in Corporate Finance from the Harvard Business School, an MBA and two degrees in electrical engineering. He has written articles dealing with the government-private industry interface that have been published in the Columbia Journal of World Business, American City and County, Health Care Management Review, Texas Hospitals and the Monograph Series of the C.D. Howe Research Institute. Other articles have appeared in The Financial Review and the Journal of Financial Education. Twenty eight authored teaching cases were published through Harvard's Intercollegiate Case Clearing House, many reprinted in textbooks. He has presented academic papers at the American Institute of Decision Sciences, the Operations Research Society of America, the Academy of Management and the Financial Management Association. He has also testified before a committee of the Canadian Parliament.